


Black King, Red Queen

by prussianblues



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Arranged Marriage, Dubious Morality, F/M, Female Jon Snow, Fluff and Angst, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, R Plus L Equals J, Sexual Tension, Strangers to Lovers, THE NON-CON IS NOT BETWEEN AJ, Young Griff is a Blackfyre
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:47:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22437397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prussianblues/pseuds/prussianblues
Summary: After the death of Daenerys Targaryen, Aegon marries Joanna Snow, the natural daughter of the late Lord Stark and Ashara Dayne. Peace, however, does not last, for in King’s Landing, no secret stays hidden forever.Set in an AU where Robert found out about the Lannister incest and Aegon won the War of Five Kings.
Relationships: Aegon VI Targaryen/Arianne Martell (One-Sided), Edric "Ned" Dayne & Aegon VI Targaryen, Jon Connington & Aegon VI Targaryen, Jon Snow/Aegon VI Targaryen
Comments: 7
Kudos: 149





	Black King, Red Queen

**Author's Note:**

> 1 This is a rewrite of another story of mine. It's still up but unfinished. However, if you have any intention of reading this one, I'd caution against reading it. I wrote the first few chapters of Ghostkeep after a three year hiatus from writing so it's very rough and rushed. The first few chapters of this story are just about catching up to the summary of Ghostkeep, just so you get how very rushed it is.
> 
> 2 The point of this story is not to tell you how the Baratheons lost the throne and how Aegon got it back. It's backstory and you'll find out what happened as you go along. A _lot_ of things are different because Jon is a girl and Robert wanted her. There will be Others, by the way, they just happened to be delayed by a summer or so compared to canon.

The sun has long dipped behind the horizon by the time Aegon spots the great grey walls of Winterfell. Beside him, Jon grumbles that this is madness, that they should have stopped long ago and continued on at dawn the next day, but Aegon had been impatient. Above them flies the Targaryen banner, a three-headed dragon roaring on a field red like blood.

At first glance, Winterfell looks like a charming castle made out of grey granite. Ashara, he thinks, would have liked it. Indeed, all Aegon sees in the light of the burning braziers is the home that should have been Ashara’s, but was not. He rides into the courtyard, knights of the Kingsguard filing in behind him and spreading out as Aegon surveys the crowd in front of him, spotting one figure in particular. Catelyn Stark is a tall woman with the same auburn hair and watery blue eyes Aegon had seen in her sister Lysa. Both Tullys had bent the knee to him by now, but here Catelyn Stark still stands, unbent, unbowed… but not _unbroken_. He can see it in the way she stands, spine rigid, a step in front of her children, as if she can shield them from the horrors of war and Targaryen justice.

It is an ultimately foolish hope of hers, however.

“Your Grace,” she says, curtsying. “Winterfell is yours.”

“Lady Stark.” He gives her a simple nod, nothing more. A thin layer of snow crunches under Aegon’s boots when he strides forward, and he takes care not to slip. He never saw snow before coming to the Seven Kingdoms, but he has long grown used to it after two years suffering through winter in the South. Still, there is so much of it here in this frozen castle, even though the cold had melted from King’s Landing moons ago. It is piled along the edges of buildings, framing each wall, each path. “Your children?”

Catelyn motions to each one in turn. First there is Brandon, the lord, a crippled boy of one-and-ten, then Rickon, six namedays old, and the daughters, Sansa and Arya. The second sticks out like a sore thumb, for she is the only one without red hair and blue eyes. Catelyn Stark introduces the rest of her household, though Aegon pays them little mind. He is looking for Ashara’s face in the crowd, but she is nowhere to be found. He soon gives up in favor of turning cold eyes back onto Lady Stark, who invites Aegon and the rest of his party inside.

The welcoming feast is not much of a feast by Aegon’s standards, but then this is the North and winter has come and gone—or so he is assured, even though Aegon is of the opinion that there should not be snow on the ground during spring. The lack of grandeur, however, is not meant as a slight, so Aegon bites his tongue. The day after, Lady Stark swears fealty to him as her son’s regent, and then… then they talk of marriage.

“Sansa is four-and-ten, Your Grace. She is flowered.” It does not surprise Aegon that it is the eldest girl that Catelyn intends for him, for she is well-mannered, a child carved in the likeness of her mother, who had once been a great beauty. Catelyn goes on, and this, too, does not surprise Aegon, “Arya is two-and-ten, Your Grace.” _If she’s more to your liking,_ she does not say, but Aegon hears her words regardless. If Arya Stark does not look like her mother, she must look like her father, and her father looked like Lyanna Stark.

Jon, sitting next to Aegon, bristles at the jab, furious that anyone would so much as imply anything untoward of Rhaegar Targaryen’s memory. But as Jon promised Aegon, he does not utter a word.

“Lady Stark,” Aegon says, “you did not declare for the Targaryen banner during the Second Conquest, and both the Starks and the Tullys were instrumental in overthrowing my grandfather.” Catelyn purses her lips, her face pale, and for a second he admires how she has not collapsed from grief and fear. She is only one woman—a very battered woman—and as Aegon himself is coming to know, ruling is a wretched job for even those raised to the task since birth. Then again, as difficult as Catelyn Stark’s life may have been, Aegon’s sympathies lie elsewhere. She is not the _only_ woman he knows who has lived a hard life. “You have not bent the knee because you wished to, my lady. You’ve done so because you had no choice. And yet you expect I’ll marry one of your daughters?”

Catelyn says nothing for the longest time. Aegon is in no hurry, so he allows her time to think, to doubt, to wonder what he is after. “Then what is it you want?”

Aegon smiles, quick and sharp. Unpleasant, like he smiled when he found Robert Baratheon rotting in the Black Cells after the Battle of the Blackwater. “The bastard, my lady.” Catelyn’s eyes widen at his bluntness. She opens her mouth to no doubt deny him, but Aegon talks over her. “The Bastard of Winterfell.”

She is quiet, Ashara’s daughter, quiet like Ashara had never been, and Aegon tries not to be disappointed in her character. He consoles himself with the thought that she is beautiful: slender, with dark hair flowing down her back, unbraided, and grey eyes lovely as ice. She looks soft and pliable, sweet as caramel. Her skin is a shade lighter than his own, and he can only tell when he takes her hand and kisses it, drawing a gasp from her. Her eyes are like ice, yes, but he fancies how lively they will look when he has her in his bed.

“My lady,” he says. She does not react at the address. “Please do sit.” She does as he asks, settling on the armchair he has led her to by the fire. He sits on the one next to her, turning it to face her, then nods at Jon to take his leave. His Hand gives Aegon a long look to let him know he disapproves, but closes the door behind him with a near silent _thud_ that screams out censure.

Joanna’s hand has gone stiff in his hold. “Your Grace, is there anything I can… help you with?” She bites out the words, as if it costs her to say them. It has been a long time since anyone has glared at Aegon—well, a long time since someone _not_ on slot for an execution has glared at him—but by the way she tries to tug her hand away from his own and leans as far from him as is polite, he realizes why.

Aegon lets go of her hand. “I can only imagine what this must look like to you. I apologize. I assure you, I’m nothing like the Usurper.” He rushes to get out the words, embarrassed, his face growing hot. “I have no intention of…” He clears his throat, trying to push down the surge of sheer _mortification_. “My lady, I’m here to speak with you, nothing more.” _For now,_ he thinks, and does that not confirm her suspicions in a way?

Joanna does not look relieved; if anything, she looks even more apprehensive. But then that should not have surprised Aegon. He is a King with an army, and she is a bastard with no father or able brothers to even try to protect her.

And they are alone.

Nothing he can say will convince her he is not after her virtue, not after whatever fumbling displays of affection the Usurper put her through. However, there is one thing he has been assured the girl wants, and it is knowledge of a very particular topic. “I would tell you about your mother.”

The change is almost immediate. One moment she has him pinned with her eyes, a look of vague distaste on her face, and the next she is leaning forward in her seat. “My mother?”

“Your mother”—Aegon smiles sadly—“was Ashara Dayne.”

She notes the past tense, she must, because the light in her eyes dims a little, and her lips tremble for an instant. The kindest thing to do would be to hold her hand now, but since she seems so averse to his touch, he keeps his own by his side.

Aegon tells her of Ashara: how she laughed when Aegon stole a piece of strawberry pie from under Jon’s nose because the whole pie was _his_ , no one else’s; how she taught him to swim in the waters of the Rhoyne when he had been a child; how she once dyed her hair blue to match his own because he thought the dye made him and Jon look like fools and she disagreed; how Ashara liked to sing even though she was not very good at it; how she took him around the markets of the Free Cities and let him run around town squares, unlike Jon, who always bemoaned his recklessness; how Ashara had shared years’ worth of stories about her brother Arthur and Aegon’s mother Elia, of their time spent in the Water Gardens of Dorne as they grew; of a promise between two girls, two mothers, caught in the middle of a war.

“We’re to be married,” he says, uncomfortable with the silence that has crept into the room. He does not understand why she looks so unhappy now, when she had been hanging on his every word for the better part of the afternoon, smiling, laughing when he told her of something particularly ridiculous. If anything, she should be falling into his arms, now that he has told her he means to make her his queen. Unlike the last king who had attempted the same, Aegon is her age, and he has the handsome Valyrian features of his ancestors.

She should be pleased.

“No,” she says, turning his expectations on their head. Rejection never crossed Aegon’s mind, but she hammers the point home by rising from her seat. He follows, shocked and somewhat disoriented. “Thank you for telling me about my mother, Your Grace, but I can’t marry you.” Her words are cold like winter’s chill. Gone is the mirth in her eyes, gone is the playful maiden that had twirled around the room with him when they acted out how Ashara attempted to teach Ser Rolly how to dance.

“Regardless, you must.” At his words, Joanna shakes her head. Her expression reminds him of Catelyn Stark, and it is not a welcome realization, that this girl had grown up with that woman’s shadow standing over her. It is likely Joanna has more in common with Catelyn Stark than with Ashara, who had gone to pieces over her missing daughter. “It’s your duty.”

“No, Your Grace. Please understand. With your leave.” She turns away, heading towards the door.

“You don’t have my leave,” he says simply. She stops at his words, looking back at him over her shoulder, cold eyes boring into him. She narrows her eyes _just so_ and purses her mouth into a tight-lipped line. He imagines her lips rising into a delicate sneer, with all the grace and cultured contempt Ashara had been capable of when displeased, and it makes him feel inadequate. It is ridiculous, of course, because he is the King. She has no right to judge him, and even less of a right to find him wanting, Ashara’s daughter or no, but he still feels unworthy, and that is _unacceptable._

She hesitates, as if she is a breath away from ignoring his order, come what may. Aegon has no intention of harming her for speaking her mind, but _she_ does not know that. “Your Grace,” she says finally, voice quiet. She spins around to face him once again.

He chooses his words with care. Improvisation has never been his strong suit, but by the gods, he did not expect her to deny him. “I thought there wasn’t a woman in these Kingdoms who didn’t want to be Queen.” Margaery Tyrell and his cousin Arianne had made that clear. With Daenerys dead, the wisest course of action is to marry one of them, as Jon made sure to remind Aegon, loudly and often, throughout their trip to Winterfell. But Jon had not been there when Ashara died. _He_ had not promised to make her daughter happy.

Aegon had.

“Some people have more sense than others.” Joanna looks away. “You mean to make me a Stark, but Starks do not do well south of the Neck.”

_I mean to make you a queen._

“You’re afraid?” He goes to deny any danger in the South, but his own words die in his throat. Aegon’s own mother had been a princess, and she had not been safe, no matter the number of guards around her.

“I can’t imagine many will be happy to see you wed in the North. The last time someone tried to make me Queen, thousands died, Your Grace, as you well know.” Yes, Aegon knows the story. Everyone does.

Eight-and-ten years ago, when the bards first sang the song of the Winter Rose, they made out Robert Baratheon to be a hero fighting to free his lady love from the clutches of a mad prince, only for her to return dead to his embrace once the throne was won. The song had changed since then: now the bards sing of Joanna Snow, Lyanna reborn, and the war waged because she refused the Usurper.

Once the Usurper’s children were exposed as bastards borne of Lannister incest, the savage had been in need of a wife, and instead of marrying Margaery Tyrell like expected, Robert Baratheon attempted to legitimize Ned Stark’s natural daughter, only to be refused. By that point, the Tyrells had taken insult, so they married their daughter to the bastard Joffrey, claiming him to be legitimate. Together, the West and the Reach waged a war that ripped apart the Seven Kingdoms and made it possible for Aegon to take back his crown.

Aegon measures his words with care. “The Tyrells and the Lannisters were my enemies less than two moons ago. Margaery Tyrell bore the great-grandchild of the man who ordered my sister and mother’s murders. Shireen Baratheon is the niece of the man who killed my father. I won’t marry them. The Martells are my mother’s family, and they supported me in my time of need, but I’m half Dornish myself. Let us bind the North to the Iron Throne, my lady.”

He knows before she speaks that he has not convinced her. “Then you should marry Sansa, Your Grace.”

“I don’t _want_ Sansa Stark,” he tells her. Realizing how petulant he sounds, he clears his throat. He tries to say something else, anything else, but she answers him before he has even thought of what to say.

“You can’t want me either. You don’t know me.” Her voice is sharp as Valyrian steel. “You want a ghost.” There is something in her expression that makes him pause instead of lashing back, something screaming at him to back away. Aegon wonders if she had said the same words three years ago—to a different king.

“A ghost?” Aegon resists the sudden manic need to laugh. She will think him mad. _It’s not the ghost she thinks._ “I don’t think you’re Lyanna reborn. I’m not the Usurper. I wasn’t in love with your aunt, and I’m not my father. I’ve given you the truth. It’s what I owe your mother.” Joanna flinches, and he regrets his words.

They are true, but they’re not the _complete_ truth. Ashara Dayne and Elia Martell had once promised one another that their children would marry, but it had never been a betrothal as such, only a silly promise in the middle of a war. Ashara herself, when alive, had also been quite clear with him—as far as Kings are concerned, marriage is a dynastic obligation, not a declaration of love. She had charged him to make her daughter happy as she lay dying in her own blood, but Aegon knows she had simply been asking for Joanna to be legitimized, for a good marriage with someone else, someone who does not have the weight of seven kingdoms on his shoulders like he does.

And yet Aegon is willing to close his eyes and pretend that is what Ashara had meant, for marrying her daughter is a strong statement on its own. Joanna Snow is a symbol of the Usurper’s inadequacy, and Aegon is not willing to let such a strong image go. Marrying her is the ultimate victory against those who had ousted the Targaryens years ago. Once Varys brought the idea to his attention, Aegon found it impossible to banish the thought from his mind. Robert Baratheon had gone to war for Lyanna and Joanna, but had failed to have either. Now that the Baratheons, Starks and Lannisters are all defeated and the kingdoms are his, he wants the last prize.

He wants the woman thousands died for.

“I apologize if I’ve offended you, Your Grace,” she says, her eyes lowered to the floor, polite as a lady. “Although I’m flattered by your offer—”

“It’s not an offer,” he points out, smooth as silk.

“Although I’m flattered,” she says once again, “especially at the high regard you seem to hold my lady mother in, you truly don’t know me, Your Grace. I’m not fit to be Queen.” She sends him a sharp look when he opens his mouth to interrupt her. _Such temper,_ Aegon thinks. “I haven’t been trained for it, and even if you say that can be fixed, I don’t wish to be Queen.”

“Why?”

Joanna blinks, as if she is stumped by him deigning to ask her why. “Because I don’t wish to!” He says nothing, waits, and as he expects, she says more in order to fill in the silence. “It would be better if you chose one of my trueborn sisters, and I know that Sansa would be delighted to—”

“Your sister is a widow. Why should I bother with her?” Aegon says, impatient. He steps close to her, one hand rising to push her hair from her face. “Better a maid.”

Joanna gives him a cold smile of triumph. “I’m not a maid.”

His eyes widen. “You’re not?” Aegon cycles through shock, anger… and a rueful sort of admiration borne of having walked right into her ploy. “Oh, that was well played,” he whispers. “You must be an astute little thing to have come up with that just now. Unless you didn’t, and you thought of it just in case I _did_ ask for your hand. Which one is it?”

Joanna steps back from him. “It’s the truth.”

_She’s a clever thing, to be sure._ Aegon raises his chin. If she can be proud, so can he. “You’ll do well in King’s Landing, I think. That’s plain now. Seamstresses will be sent to your rooms after supper—where you are expected to sit next to me now, not on the benches. I handed Lady Stark the decree of your legitimization this morning.”

Joanna’s eyes turn hard. “You were never going to give me a choice, were you?” she hisses.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she balls her fists at her sides. In his defense, Aegon never imagined she would say no. When she strides past him to leave, Aegon grabs her wrist, intending to _explain_ that he cannot walk up to Catelyn Stark to tell her he has changed his mind about marrying her—to do so is to look weak, and Aegon cannot be weak, not this soon after the Conquest. No one warned him Ashara’s daughter would be this stubborn, or else he would have come to her with the intention of courting her.

The change is immediate, violent in its suddenness: one moment she is bristling with anger, the next she is trembling. “Let me go,” she chokes out, a sniff following her words.

Aegon eyes her strangely, confused at her reaction. Not wanting to embarrass her by calling attention to her tears, he tells her gently, “I’m assigning you a knight of the Kingsguard from now on. He’s one of the two posted outside. I just wanted you to know.” He does not want her to leave like this.

Still, he lets her go.

* * *

“This is madness,” Jon hisses at him days later.

“What is?” Aegon does not turn back to look at his Hand. He sits on a window seat within the guesthouse, and not very far away, he can see Winterfell’s godswood, its large trees blotting out the sky for what seems to be leagues.

“Your marriage,” Jon says, distaste in every word. “She’s a bastard, Aegon.”

He refrains from pointing out that that is no longer the case. Jon will not care. “Who would you have me marry, Jon?” They have had this same argument many times. Before Daenerys’ death, it was not an issue, but after his aunt met her end in Oldtown while fighting Euron Greyjoy, Aegon’s small council had been unable to agree on anyone. Therefore, the decision is Aegon’s now.

“Someone trueborn, perhaps? Someone who wouldn’t bring shame down on the Iron Throne? Someone who’s not Robert Baratheon’s whore? You’ll find I’m no longer choosey where your bride is concerned, not after this.”

“She never married him,” Aegon says, his mind elsewhere. “She said no.” And then Joanna ran away so that she would not be forced, or so the songs say—some north, some east.

“And that matters? Everyone always goes on about how she’s Lyanna reborn, but I remember her aunt, little tramp that she was. The bastard looks far more like Ashara than people are willing to admit. Certainly, the resemblance isn’t enough that a lovesick fool of a beast like Robert Baratheon would go to war for her if she hadn’t encouraged it. What do you think she did to make him slobber after her like he did?”

Aegon stays quiet for a minute, his mind rejecting the very idea of what Jon suggests. “Then why would she say no, if she fucked him?” In fact, why would Ned Stark—disgraceful piece of shit that he was, to have betrayed Ashara like he did—have betrothed his beloved bastard daughter to a man who had been known to dishonor his wife so publicly? He must have had no other choice. Aegon would have no trouble believing it of a man like Mace Tyrell or Tywin Lannister, but for all his faults, ambition did not trump family in Ned Stark’s eyes. “There’s more to this than either of us know.”

“If only the Spider was here, then maybe he’d earn his keep,” Jon blusters, resentment seeping into his tone. Aegon feels the urge to sigh. Jon, for all that Aegon loves him as a father, is as petty as Aegon and twice as vengeful, and so he has still not forgiven Aegon for keeping Varys as his Master of Whispers. He has also not forgiven Varys himself for having Jon lie about his supposed death, which Jon calls _distasteful._

“He suggested the marriage, you know,” he says, in an effort to explain himself. Of late, nothing Aegon does pleases Jon, as if the vengeance they imparted on the men who butchered the Targaryen dynasty leeched all the love he once felt for Aegon. “Rhaegar Targaryen’s son and Lyanna Stark’s ghost on the Iron Throne would silence most who still insist that my father stole her aunt. She’s the reason the Usurper is dead at all. Whoever has her metaphorically wins the Trident.”

Aegon thinks his words will pacify Jon, but they have the opposite effect. “You foolish boy,” Jon erupts, apparently forgetting that they are no longer Griff and his son, but the King and his Hand. “If that’s your intention, then that’s what a mistress is for!”

This makes Aegon turn to send Jon a scathing glare. “She’s Ashara’s daughter. I’d never dishonor her in such a way.”

“Ashara wouldn’t have wanted this! She wanted you to marry your cousin.” Jon rakes a hand through his greying hair. “Arianne may not be ideal but marrying her would be better than this. Anyone would be better!”

“Joanna will tie us to the North. If I don’t marry one of the Stark girls, soon enough one of the boys will be crowned King in the North once again.” Catelyn Stark bent the knee because Aegon united the rest of the Seven Kingdoms behind him. He has no doubt that without a proper alliance, the moment that no longer holds true, the woman will crown her son, cripple or no.

“You _made_ that girl a Stark, she wasn’t born one. If this is about an alliance to the North, then marry one of the other two. The Starks have always been a sentimental lot, but however much those boys may love their bastard sister, they’ll love their trueborn sisters more.”

Aegon bites the inside of his cheek. “I’ve made my decision.” He returns his gaze to the window, where snow weaves a blanket over the top of the trees, their red and green leaves peeking through the thick white. Just yesterday, he had walked into the godswood in search of peace and quiet, seeking to escape Jon’s furious questioning, when he had inadvertently stumbled upon Joanna sparring with Ser Lyn Corbray. He thinks back on her flushed face and the way she had been absolutely horrified to find him watching her get beaten into the ground. Aegon had offered to spar with her as well—telling her in teasing that she clearly needed the practice, novice as she was—but she had declined, rushing off without a backward glance, leaving Aegon free to appreciate the cut of her breeches.

“Aegon!” Jon screams, breaking him out of his thoughts. Aegon goes red, embarrassed at having been so absorbed in a fantasy, of all things. Jon looks at him suspiciously. “You’ve been… pensive lately.”

“Oh no, not at all.”

* * *

The wedding takes place a week later.

Edric Dayne leads Joanna into the godswood, down the path to the heart tree, where Aegon waits. She is clad in white wool and silver lace, and if they had been in the South, she would have worn lace and silk that did her shape justice. The gown is not unflattering—far from it—but Aegon grew up sailing around the Free Cities, where bared skin is the norm and high necks are prudish.

“Who comes?” Aegon starts off the ceremony with two simple words and, after the two have said their vows, he ends it by lifting her in his arms and carrying her all the way into the Great Hall, where he sets her down to start the dance.

“Shouldn’t we have married in the light of the Seven?” Joanna had not spoken one word while he carried her through the keep, but then neither had she looked displeased during that time. She even looked bit besotted during the ceremony.

“We’ll have another ceremony in King’s Landing.”

She tilts her head. “But there’s a sept here.”

“Yes,” he agrees, “but it’s small.” Which is not a problem, since half the Northern lords had not even been able to arrive on time, given Aegon’s rush. He had travelled light, too, so there had been few attendees on his side. “And would you really have wanted to marry in a place so very _hers?”_ Aegon had considered insisting on a dual ceremony, first in the godswood and then in the sept, but it would have been done out of spite, to torture Lady Stark. Sansa Stark had told him her lord father had the place built for her lady mother upon their marriage, and it would have been so very sweet, to turn a cherished place into an open wound. Aegon had discarded the idea, however, because while he has no qualms about making Catelyn Stark miserable, he does not wish to spend his wedding day seeking vengeance.

Joanna frowns. “Why do you hate Lady Stark so much?”

“Why don’t _you_ hate her more?” he accuses. She avoids the woman with practiced ease, and when forced to interact, they are both icily polite to one another. He wants to rail at Joanna, but he will not make an enemy out of her for striving to lead a peaceful existence with as little conflict with her stepmother as possible. She had, after all, been the hated child in the family Catelyn Stark nurtured. “She died loving him,” Aegon says at last. “I stayed with her when she was… dying. She kept asking for him.” _Just Ned Stark, asking him to return their daughter._ And Aegon cannot forgive Ned Stark for it, not even knowing the man was dead by the time Ashara tore her wrists to shreds.

“Oh.”

He tilts up her chin when she lowers her head. “But you can’t let it bother you today. Ashara would have been happy to see us wed, Joanna.” He wants to think so, anyway. Perhaps this is not what Ashara—or even his mother—would have chosen, but he doubts it would have made them _unhappy._

And then he is dancing with Sansa.

She is too young to truly be called beautiful, but he can see the promise of it in her features. He had talked to her most of all, out of everyone in the North—even Joanna, who avoided him like the grey plague after he found her sparring in the godswood. Gracious and soft-spoken, she would have made a wonderful queen, had he not minded the seeming lack of spine.

Sansa would have appealed to Aegon once, before he had gone to war. Now she sounds foolish to him, with her bright eyes and sweet voice and head full of knights and songs. It is as if no one has ever bothered to tell her that some knights—that _most_ knights—rape women when a city is sacked, that songs are pretty lies sung to the victors of war. She lost a brother and a father to war, and yet she still smiles and looks at him with want, as if he is her answer out of the cold, boring, but undoubtedly safe, existence she leads.

“Joanna—tell me about her, my lady. Would it please her to hear me sing?” He knows she does not want to talk about Joanna, but there is something about Sansa that makes him want to scream, that makes him want to shake her. Had Lyanna Stark been so eager to dance with a married man, to smile at him and ask him about his interests with heat in her eyes?

Sansa’s smile dims at the mention of Joanna. She answers him morosely. “She might.” Had Rhaegar Targaryen asked one simple question like Aegon has, would Elia Martell still be alive?

* * *

While there are plenty of married or widowed women to undress him for the bedding, there are few men to undress Joanna. He is forced to contemplate the logistics of the occasion when the men, few as they are, begin to slam their horns of ale on their tables. Joanna, seated next to him, has turned into ice.

Aegon makes to rise as the women join in, the crowd getting louder and lewder. Joanna grasps his hand, her hand sweaty. She says something, but it is drowned out by the shouting. He looks at her questioningly. “I said…” She swallows. “I said I don’t want a bedding.”

Joanna does not look at him, but he takes his time considering her. With her gaze lowered to her plate, her face shadowed, she must look like a young bride blushing to the guests. Joanna is not blushing, though. Her hand trembles on his.

“Come.” When he steps down from the dais, Joanna at his side, he tells the guests there will be no bedding. On his arm, Joanna almost melts in relief, and he starts to feel distress pooling in his gut. _Surely I’m wrong._ One man makes a joke about him wanting to keep his pretty little wife to himself. The comment makes him furious, but he raises and eyebrow and says flippantly, “But of course.” Most of the guests are all too intoxicated to care much, though. Whistling and slurred jokes follow them out of the hall as Aegon marches Joanna out and away, to their chambers.

The serving girl that leads them there does a passable approximation of a curtsy before she departs, and Aegon closes the door, leaving him and Joanna alone for the first time since he told her of Ashara. The silence is deafening.

“Wine?” he asks, heading to the small table set by the window. When she does not answer, he pours himself a cup and sits, waiting for Joanna to join him. She comes into view, perching herself on the very edge of her seat, twisting her hands on her lap. “What happened to you?” But he already knows. Aegon recalls when they first met in Lady Stark’s solar, when he grabbed her wrist and she cried for no apparent reason.

She ignores his question. “It was very kind of you to forego the bedding ceremony, Your Grace, thank you.”

“Was it the Usuper?” he insists. It is a guess, nothing more, but when she flinches, he knows he is right. Aegon sips his wine, the sweet taste of peaches somehow sour on his tongue.

“No,” she tries.

Aegon is too angry at a dead man to be angry at _her_ for lying to his face. He hates lies, but this lie he understands. He eyes her from over the rim of his cup. She does not look like a woman who has been raped. _Don’t victims all look a certain way, crazed and insensible?_ There is a dull throbbing behind his eyes, and he knows it will soon become a pounding. Aegon has sacked cities and put holdfasts to the torch. He has ordered the deaths of hundreds and caused the deaths of thousands. He had known, on an intellectual level, that people fell victim to rape, but he had not _known,_ not really. Joanna had not been a victim of his campaign to win back the Iron Throne, but it is a given that many have. Ironically, she has put a face to the victims, _his_ victims.

It is so sobering to think that indeed, some injuries are not skin-deep, that some hurts fester—even in women who wear breeches and goad knights of the Kingsguard into doomed sparring matches.

“You look tired,” he says, and she does. “I think we’d do well to sleep now.” He finishes his wine and rises to strip off his clothes, but he leaves his breeches on. When he looks back at her, Joanna has not moved. _Father, give me strength._ “Is there something wrong?”

Joanna glances up, but she drops her eyes when she sees his state of dress. There is a blush coloring her cheeks. “I need help removing my gown.” The words sound like they are being torn from her throat, so reluctant is she to say them.

“I can—”

“No,” she says quickly. “Can a maid…?”

Aegon shakes his head, uselessly, for she is not even looking at him. “Everyone must think we’ve laid together.” _You can either sleep in that gown or let me help._ Then he blinks. “Even if you don’t take it off now, you’ll still need help getting it off in the morning.

Joanna looks at him warily, but she steps in front of him and turns around. Aegon makes short work of the lacings, trying to appear like he has done this before. His eyes fall on the sweep of her back once he lets the heavy wool fall to the floor. Her silkshift is transparent, and he can see her. He has seen his fair share of naked women, but this feels, well, different.

He expects her to make for the bed and slide underneath the covers as soon as he is done, but she bents to pick up the gown. She caresses the details on the fabric with the tips of her fingers as she drapes it over the chair Aegon vacated. Then, after that is done, she scampers underneath the bedclothes.

Confused, he slips in on the opposite side. “Why…?” He is at a loss for words. What _is_ he asking her about?

She knows, though. “I’ve just never worn anything so beautiful before.”

“Oh.”

Aegon falls asleep to her breathing.

* * *

Their marriage is not consummated for a long time.

Aegon insists on pretending like it has been, so they sleep on the same bed every night to keep rumors at bay. If the knights of the Kingsguard wonder why there are no sounds coming from behind the closed doors of their chambers, they say nothing. Already, there are minstrels singing about their undying love, about Lyanna reborn and Rhaegar’s son, about how Joanna Snow rejected _one_ king but married another.

In the meantime, they ride south on the King’s Road. At first, she is skittish around him, but the barest, accidental touches of their hands turn intentional with time, and those turn into kisses—at first simple brushes of their lips, then later longer ones shared only in the privacy of their chambers once the day is done. He finds that although she has been hurt terribly, Joanna is as curious about sex as Aegon himself, so he tells himself to be patient and lets her go at her own pace. Some nights, Joanna digs her nails into his shoulders when he pulls her close, his lips trailing the column of her throat, the curve of a shoulder, the tops of her breasts. Some nights, she retreats to the edge of the bed and ignores him.

Joanna refuses to confirm anything. She does not call what has been done to her rape—she does not call it anything at all, simply goes quiet and still, her eyes afraid—even when the proof is stamped on the way she reacts to the smallest of things. Aegon learns that she cannot abide to have her wrists restrained, that the taste of plum wine on his lips makes her dissolve into hysterics, that yanking her hair will make her freeze and tremble in fear. It is all very telling, and he files away each reaction so as not to repeat whatever sets it off.

Every rejection feels utterly personal despite knowing it is not. He has never done any of this before, has never touched a woman like he has Joanna, and some part of him feels inadequate. Half the time, it is instinct guiding him instead of what he knows from other men boasting. The first time he has his fingers in her smallclothes, she guides them there, but he is the one to slide the fabric down and place his mouth on her. Robert Baratheon did not do _this,_ Aegon can tell immediately from the way she responds, pulling at _his_ hair and gasping in surprise.

In King’s Landing, they take to sparring together after breakfast in her apartments, and on the day it happens, the session ends with both of them on the foliage, legs entwined and hands tearing at the others’ clothes. Ser Hendry is red as a raspberry when he interrupts, reminding them that anyone has access to the Red Keep’s godswood.

Joanna wears a crimson gown to supper, his mother’s rubies sparkling on her ears. Their guests are hardly out the door when she _looks_ at him and winds her arms around his neck. “Come to bed.” He does, letting her lead him from his private audience chamber. She half melts when he nips a trail down her neck. He wraps his arms around her waist, but lets her go when she pushes his doublet off his shoulders.

He loses his trousers before even getting to the bed.

Aegon’s hand slides under her shift, nearly transparent in the candlelight. Joanna moans into his mouth when his hand finds its way to her smallclothes and inside them. She breaks the kiss with a little gasp, her head thrown back. She still wears the ruby teardrops, and they glint when she moves under his hands, with every delicate sound that falls from her lips. Aegon's eyes slide down, along with his other hand, down the space between her breasts and her middle, only to trace the same path underneath the shift, this time in reverse.

Joanna takes his lips once again, but not before she pushes him onto his back. She rests her hands on his chest, stroking down the ridges and scars with a hungry look on her face that makes his mouth go dry. Aegon bunches her shift in his hands, baring her to his eyes, the tips of his fingers ghosting over her nipples. He removes her smallclothes. She removes his.

Then there is heat, and Aegon must remember to _breathe_.

* * *

By the time the crown arranges for a ceremony by the Faith to renew their marriage vows, there is not a single soul in the Seven Kingdoms who does not have an opinion on Joanna and his marriage.

The smallfolk like her. Bastard-born and the subject of a hundred different songs, she is more real than any highborn lady Aegon could have wed, even though Margaery Tyrell visited orphanages and walked around the city during her time as queen. “Lyanna reborn,” they cry, and there is a new spin to the song of the Winter Rose. It now tells the story of a silver prince who fell in love with a wolf-maid, who ran away and died of grief upon his death. The songs should please him, for they have finally cleansed away the idea that his father raped Lyanna Stark, and yet he seethes for his lady mother’s sake. _Songs are nothing but lies,_ he reminds himself, _and this is for the good of the realm, for House Targaryen most of all._ Aegon has won the Winter Rose, but the price is that he has created an irrevocable link between his marriage to Joanna and his father’s affair with Lyanna Stark, inadvertently making it romantic instead of the debauchery it was.

Yet no one cares. Apparently, his subjects think he wants to hear of how one Stark girl sent the kingdoms to war because she refused to marry, and how another had done the very same thing less than two decades later. No one sees it that way, though. Or more accurately, no one _dares_ say they see it that way, too afraid of offending him.

The Red Keep’s Great Hall, once again decorated with its dragon skulls, blazes bright, dozens of torches lining the walls, the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen and the direwolf of House Stark hanging in banners from tapestries all around.

Aegon wears black, the rubies on his crown and the pale silver-gold of his hair more than enough to draw the eye. Joanna, to offset him, is clad in a brocade gown of silver and white silk, a monstrously heavy thing that catches the light and makes her look like a delicate maiden despite its weight. They look like fire and ice, him stern and humorless, her pure as snow and sweet as honey. The reality is the opposite: Aegon, for all that he has warred and conquered, had once been a green boy with a head full of songs and pleasantries, all the better to flatter and entertain his guests; Joanna, on the other hand, has a face that for all its beauty, is unreadable even when she smiles.

As evening turns to night, Joanna’s shy smiles come more and more often, but he knows they are as fake as half the words that come out of the guests’ mouths, all one thousand of them. Thirty courses come and go, the lords and ladies of his court growing ever drunker and his wife ever sadder with each one.

“We should have gone with seventy-eight,” Jon mutters under his breath, his form slumped in his seat at Aegon’s right. Aegon follows his glare, where he claps eyes on Mace Tyrell’s plump form half the hall away, his seating arrangements very much an intentional slight. When the small council decided on the matters of their wedding feast, Jon had been insistent on seventy-eight courses, exactly one more than was served in the wedding of Margaery Tyrell and her bastard king, but Aegon had been horrified at both the expense and the bad taste of such an ostentatious display of wealth.

“No, this is just right.” Jon’s eyes flash with anger at Aegon’s words. Unnerved, Aegon looks away to find Joanna gone. He looks over the crowd milling by the doors and finds her on the arm of a man with flaxen hair. “I’ll be back shortly.” Jon disregards him, getting up to follow, and because Aegon does not mind it, he says nothing.

Ned and Joanna are joined at the hip, making their way through the crowd, both of them too somber by half, but since they both have a reputation for keeping to themselves, no one finds anything amiss. He is about to step into their line of sight when a hand touches his shoulder.

Aegon turns to find Arianne smiling up at him, her dark eyes wide. “You’re far too sweet, cousin. I thought you’d never come down from the dais, and now when you have, you seek out your dear wife? Haven’t you spent the entire night by her side already?” She takes his arm, resting her head against it. “Come along. For all that you’ve given our family a place of honor, we haven’t had the pleasure of your company yet.” Arianne leads him to Trystane and Quentyn, who are engrossed in conversation with Ser Arron Qorgyle, one of the knights of the Kingsguard. They are discussing the current draught in Dorne.

Later, Aegon notices the sight of his Hand hovering around Ned and Joanna, probably smoothing over any feathers the two ruffle.

“Ah, a man in love,” Trystane bites out.

Aegon gives him a questioning look. Besides his brother, Quentyn looks pained.

“Like father, like son,” Arianne says, and he hears the venom in her voice. Ser Qorgyle makes himself scarce.

Aegon narrows his eyes at her. “Just so.” He looks around, drawing out the moment, then looks down at his diminutive cousin. “I must go,” he says coldly.

Arianne looks unhappy. “Of course, Your Grace,” Arianne says dejectedly. She lets his arm slip from her hold.

“Excuse me.” He makes his rounds, asking after a lord’s health, a lady’s newborn granddaughter, a knight’s pregnant wife. It costs him nothing, and Aegon even enjoys it.

“Would you look at her? I’ve never seen such a handsome dress. She truly dresses like a queen,” he hears a woman say.

Aegon smiles, already walking past, when another says, “She may dress like a queen now, but she was but an ugly little rat four moons ago.” The smile drops from his face. “Anyone can dress like a queen when they _are_ a queen. What’s impressive should be how she got here.”

“I think we all know how.”

“Her poor sisters must be heartbroken, to have the bastard snatch away the King.”

Aegon does not need to hear anymore. From the shadows, he commits the three women’s faces to memory—just in case—but it is not like he can do anything about the slander. Most of his court is of the opinion that Joanna is a passing fancy, that he will soon tire of her and have their marriage annulled when he has had his fill of her. Punishing one of them would mean punishing them all, and Aegon cannot afford to do so.

He curls his arm around Joanna’s waist, his fingers brushing against her hip in an absent caress. “Let’s sit.”

Joanna does not even deign him with a glance. “No, you go on.” She slips out his hold, greeting a Lannister of Lannisport on her way out the hall.

Aegon frowns after her. He does not expect her to _stay_ gone, but that is exactly what she does. He finally decides to leave as well—better for it to look like they have stolen away for a tryst than for people to think they are at odds.

He finds her in her chambers, as he expects, and dismisses the maid brushing Joanna’s hair with a nod. She meets his eyes in the mirror. “You left early,” he says. Aegon sets his hands on her shoulders, over her heavy robe. Her silver gown is nowhere to be seen.

“As did you.”

Joanna does not offer an explanation. His temper simmers. “Why? Did something happen?”

“Not at all.”

“Don’t lie to me, Joanna.” It is enough that his court is a cesspool of intrigue, his lords and ladies liars without compare. Aegon does not want a marriage tarnished by deceit; enough of his life is taken up by lies already. He wants an honest marriage.

“It’s nothing. Just the court.” She waves her hand in a dismissive gesture.

“You pout when you lie.”

“I’m not lying,” she says hotly. Aegon decides to drop it. He makes to pull away, but she half turns to face him. “It’s a lot of things. The court doesn’t help, I’m sorry.” Joanna stands up and kisses him, her hands fisting on his doublet, something about her oddly desperate.

_A lot of things_ , he thinks after they are done. _What things?_

* * *

Aegon summons Arianne to his solar the next day.

She wears a sheer gown that leaves little to the imagination. He does not look away, his temper flaring at what is obviously a spoiled child’s tantrum.

“Arianne, I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he starts, “but we were never going to wed.” Before his aunt’s death, Daenerys had been the only option on the table, and after her death, well, Arianne had never made a particularly strong case for herself. Dorne had loved his mother and still loves her; they would have fought for Aegon even had his mother’s family deserted him. In the end, what had swayed Aegon had been Varys’ words of how Ashara’s daughter would forever be a symbol to the smallfolk.

To her credit, she no longer tries to spin herself as the Elia Martell of the story. “You didn’t have to marry the bastard.”

“I stand by my choice.”

“Have you heard what they’re saying?” Arianne hisses. “How they sing about the Winter Rose, celebrating how your father crowned a bitch in heat over your own mother? _Have you, Your Grace?”_ Aegon closes his eyes. “You would not marry me and Dorne accepted that. _I_ accepted that.”

“You clearly have accepted nothing. You’re still playing your games.”

Arianne shakes her head, and when she speaks, her voice trembles with rage. “You could have married one of her sisters, a trueborn one, but instead here you are, making a fool of yourself, thirsting over a very particular cunt like your father before you! You have no respect for your lady mother.” Aegon thinks of Joanna, so very beautiful with her dark hair and grey eyes, and wonders how much she really looks like the woman his father dishonored his mother with. _Does it matter?_

It does.

“I have my reasons for—”

“Reasons? Reasons! What reasons could you possibly have to justify this shame?”

Aegon grinds his teeth. “As I said, I have my reasons, and they do not concern you, cous—”

“The only reason you have is your cock, Aegon.” She rises from her seat like the viper their uncle had been, her silks flowing around her, shifting over her brown skin. “You’re half a Martell. Dorne is yours, but don’t ever step foot in my lands again. Not while I live! I’m done with you. What a fool I’ve been all this time, to feel this way!”

Arianne slams the door on her way out. Come sundown, all three of his Dornish cousins have left King’s Landing.

That night when he finds Joanna’s bed, he slides in behind her sleeping form, meaning to do nothing but sleep. She shifts in his arms, turning to face him. “The entire castle is talking about your cousin.”

“What are they saying?” He runs his nose over the line of her throat, pulls her close to bury his face in her soft hair.

Silence. Then, “They say she came to your solar half-nude and left weeping.” Her voice is ice. “The most popular theory as to why is that she’s with child, yours, and now hurries back to Dorne on your orders.”

“And you believe that.”

“It would be a lot easier to dismiss if you hadn’t let her drape herself all over you yesterday night.” She sits up on the bed. “Everyone saw that, Your Grace. On your wedding feast as well.” _Ah, what things indeed._

Aegon turns on his back to better look at her. “It was but a moment.”

Joanna gives him a condescending smile. “A moment, yes.” She straddles his hips and leans down to brush their lips together.

“They are lies, Joanna,” he whispers against her lips. She must believe him.

“Of course.”

* * *

Things change after that.

**Author's Note:**

> Well I hope you liked it! Please comment on what you liked/didn't like. If you're one of the people who read Ghostkeep, how do you like this version? I've tried my best to expand on Joanna and Aegon's relationship before, you know, tearing them apart. _Evil grin._ In a more somber note, if anyone's wondering, yes, Robert did rape Joanna in the previous story; it just so happened that she met Ygritte in that version and she helped her get through seeing sex as a bad thing. As that didn't happen here, she works at it with Aegon.
> 
> Also, I'm 100% looking for a beta so if you're interested hit me up. Betaing for me means giving me opinions on plotholes, how characters come across and suggesting ways to make things more dynamic.


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